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      Mitski’s Sharp Take on a Creative Life, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Arca featuring Sia, Kelis, Tambino and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Mitski, ‘Working for the Knife’Mitski monumentalizes an artist’s self-doubts — the creative impulse versus the editorial knife — in “Working for the Knife.” The track begins as a trudging march with stark, droning synthesizer tones, but Patrick Hyland’s production expands into ever-wider spaces with lofty, reverberating guitars. Mitski sings about missteps and rejections at first, but her imagination perseveres: “I start the day lying and end with the truth.” JON PARELESArca featuring Sia, ‘Born Yesterday’This unexpected collaboration just had to happen. Sia has a memorably broken voice and a songwriting strategy of victim-to-victory that has brought her million-selling hits, both on her own and behind the scenes. Arca, who has made music with Björk and Kanye West, has an operatic voice and a mastery of disorienting electronics from eerie atmospherics to brutal beats. In “Born Yesterday,” Sia wails, “You took my heart and now it’s broken,” confronting a partner’s betrayal. Arca twists the electronic track all over the place, bringing in and warping and subtracting a four-on-the-floor beat, pumping up the drama as Sia decides whether she’ll be “your baby any more.” The twists never stop. PARELESTainy with Bad Bunny and Julieta Venegas, ‘Lo Siento BB:/’Cynics might see a Tainy-produced track featuring Bad Bunny and the beloved pop-rock icon Julieta Venegas as the type of collaboration engineered in major label conference rooms. But “Lo Siento BB:/” is a seamless matchup that leverages both artists’ capacities for pointed vocal drama. Venegas’s sky-high melodies and funereal piano transition into El Conejo Malo’s signature baritone. Sad boys, sad girls and sad people, consider this your new anthem. ISABELIA HERRERARobert Glasper featuring D Smoke & Tiffany Gouché, ‘Shine’The Black church has been close to the center or at the very root of many big changes in American popular music; and over in the jazz world recently, gospel has been reasserting its influence. The pianist and bandleader Robert Glasper is a main driver of the trend, and this week he released “Shine,” an early single from the forthcoming “Black Radio 3,” featuring the rising M.C. D Smoke and the vocalist Tiffany Gouché. Glasper gifts the session with a signature sparkly harmonic vamp, and D Smoke projects farsighted conviction on his verses; Gouché’s vocals are beatific. This is the trinity that made the first “Black Radio” a smash, and has fed Glasper’s star formula: a gospel core, backpack-generation rap wisdom and bravado performances from female singers. But the track’s low-key showstopper is the bassist Burniss Travis, who’s doing more here than you might at first realize, which is exactly the intent. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOglaive and ericdoa, ‘Mental Anguish’This is one of the standout tracks on “Then I’ll Be Happy,” the new collaborative EP from the rising hyperpop stars glaive and ericdoa. At the beginning, it has some of the parchedness of early emo, but then lightning-bolt squelchy synths arrive, and fraught vocals that sound like they’re being microwaved in real time. JON CARAMANICAJames Blake featuring SZA, ‘Coming Back’James Blake is smart to let SZA upstage him in “Coming Back.” It starts as one more slice of his usual keyboard-and-falsetto melancholy, but when SZA arrives she challenges both his morose narrative — “Don’t you have a clue about where my mind is right now?” — and his stolid music, as she bounces syllables around the beat and brings new zigzags to the melody. Blake rises to the competition, chopping up the production and pepping up his tune. Even so, the song may not convince her to come back. PARELESJustin Bieber featuring TroyBoi, ‘Red Eye’It has been clear for a long time, but just to spell it out: Justin Bieber is the world’s savviest beat-shopper. While the lyrics of “Red Eye” flaunt the prerogatives of glamorous bicoastal American living — “You should be hopping on a redeye”— the track, by the British producer TroyBoi, plays with electronics, reggaeton, Afrobeats, dubstep and dembow: so digital, so professional, so perky, so slick. PARELESC. Tangana and Nathy Peluso, ‘Ateo’Latin pop’s geographical borders are dissolving. C. Tangana, a rapper turned singer from Spain, and Nathy Peluso, an R&B-loving singer from Argentina, find a meeting place amid the light-fingered guitar syncopations of bachata, a style from the Dominican Republic. “Ateo” translates as “atheist,” but the song quickly makes clear that desire and bachata add up to “a miracle come down from heaven”; now they’re believers. PARELESKelis, ‘Midnight Snacks’Kelis’s first new song in seven years sneaks up on you. Full of whispered astral funk and understated steaminess, it’s a welcome return for one of R&B’s left-field luminaries. CARAMANICATambino, ‘Estos Días’Tambino lets genres slip through his fingers like fine grains of white sand. On “Estos Días,” a sliced-up baile funk rhythm blends into dance-punk verve, only to burst into the soaring drama of a pop ballad. The track is a meditation on the protests that spread across the world last year, and the police violence that continues to plague marginalized communities. “Nos mata la policía,” he intones. “The police kill us.” But in the trembling fragility of the Peruvian-born artist’s voice, there lies a kind of radical hope. “Yo voy hacer mejor/Dejar todo el dolor,” it quivers. “I’m going to do better/Leave behind all the pain.” HERRERASusana Baca, ‘Negra del Alma’Susana Baca, the Afro-Peruvian songwriter and folklorist who has also served as Peru’s Minister of Culture, marks the 50th year of her career with her new album “Palabras Urgentes” (“Urgent Words”), connecting age-old injustices to the present. “Negro del Alma” is a traditional Andean song commemorating a complicated past, when Andean natives met Afro-Peruvians and fell in love. Baca complicates it further, meshing disparate Peruvian traditions of marimbas, hand percussion and horns. But her voice carries through the song’s anguish and determination. PARELESSuzanne Ciani, ‘Morning Spring’Suzanne Ciani’s “Morning Spring” is the first taste of “@0,” a new charity compilation showcasing the works of ambient creators past and present. Here, orbs of synth bubbles float to the surface like a cool carbonated drink, while others wash beneath, ebbing and flowing like the low tide. Ciani — a synth pioneer recently celebrated in the documentary “Sisters With Transistors: Electronic Music’s Unsung Heroines” — renders an aquatic concerto, its symphonic movements receding and transforming at every turn, like the curling crests of ocean waves. HERRERAKenny Garrett, ‘Joe Hen’s Waltz’As his contribution to “Relief,” a forthcoming compilation benefiting the Jazz Foundation of America’s Musicians’ Emergency Fund, the esteemed alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett provided an unreleased outtake from the sessions for his standout 2012 album, “Seeds From the Underground.” With a teetering melody and a swaggering mid-tempo swing feel, “Joe Hen’s Waltz” pays homage to the saxophonist Joe Henderson, nodding to his knack for slippery melodies that seem to move through a house of mirrors. In Garrett’s quartet at the time, much of the energy was being generated by his partnership with the pianist Benito Gonzalez, whose playing is rooted in Afro-Latin clave and the influence of McCoy Tyner, but has an effervescent phrasing style of its own. RUSSONELLO More

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      Louise Farrenc, 19th-Century Composer, Surges Back Into Sound

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      Orchestras are turning to her turbulent symphonies; pianists, to her sophisticated études; chamber musicians, to her superb Nonet.Read the reviews that the composer, pianist and teacher Louise Farrenc received in the middle of the 19th century, and the kinds of gendered, backhanded compliments that male critics have so often given to female artists pop up with tiresome regularity.There was innuendo. “By the magic of her musical palette,” a critic wrote in 1841, “the composer envelops you with nocturnal images, at once mysterious and blissful.”There was surprise. “It is such a rarity for a woman to compose symphonies of real talent,” offered a journal in 1851.There was patronizing praise. “Well written,” Hector Berlioz called a Farrenc overture in 1840, “and orchestrated with a talent rare among women.”But if Farrenc’s success, greater than any of her female contemporaries except Emilie Mayer, had critics admitting she stymied their stereotypes, those stereotypes were then slyly reimposed. “The dominant quality of this work, composed by a woman, is precisely what one would least expect to find,” a critic wrote of her First Symphony in 1845. “There is more power than delicacy.”The conductor François-Joseph Fétis, one of her leading promoters, made the gambit clear. “With Mme. Farrenc,” he wrote, “the inspiration and the art of composing are of masculine proportions.”As the classical music world belatedly tries to put behind it the myriad prejudices it has inherited and perpetuated, Farrenc’s music is returning to a prominence that her newfound proponents argue she has always deserved.“The symphonies and the overtures should hold a similar place as Schumann and Mendelssohn,” said Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who conducted Farrenc’s Second Symphony this summer with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and leads her Third with the Orchestre Métropolitain in Montreal on Oct. 29. “I do believe that she’s completely deserving of that.”Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra during the pandemic in a streamed performance of Farrenc’s Symphony No. 2.Jeff FuscoScholarly attention to Farrenc remains meager in English, with no full biography appearing since Bea Friedland’s in 1980; unlike Florence Price, for example, she has enjoyed little in the way of persistent academic advocacy.But much of the chamber music in which Farrenc excelled has been recorded, including her sonatas, piano trios and famous Nonet, the success of which in 1850 led her to demand, and receive, equal pay on the faculty of the Paris Conservatory, where she had become the first female professor in 1842.“I find that a lot of pianist-composers from that time knew what instruments should sound like, but their craftsmanship was not always as immaculate as hers,” said the hornist James Sommerville, who performs the Nonet with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players on Nov. 7. “She has a great ear for melody, a great sense of structure.”And orchestras are turning to the three turbulent symphonies Farrenc wrote in the 1840s, which achieved significant success despite the Parisian public’s hostility to orchestral scores.“They are written in a style that is both Romantic and Classical, with a great thematic and harmonic originality, both poetic and energetic,” said the conductor Laurence Equilbey, who released recordings of the First and Third with the Insula Orchestra this summer and leads the Third with the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston on Nov. 5 and 7. “Her music is not as avant-garde as that of Berlioz, for example, but it is so solidly constructed.”Craft was Farrenc’s trademark, one she honed in a strikingly supportive environment. Born Jeanne-Louise Dumont in 1804, she came from a line of court sculptors and grew up among artists resident at the Sorbonne. Her brother Auguste’s “The Spirit of Liberty” still crowns the Place de la Bastille.Farrenc learned piano and theory from 6, tutored by a godmother who had studied with Muzio Clementi. At 15, she began private lessons with Anton Reicha, a friend of Beethoven’s who, as a professor at the Conservatory that barred Farrenc from entry as a composition student, also taught Berlioz, Liszt and César Franck.She briefly broke off these studies in 1821 to marry Aristide Farrenc, a flutist and publisher of some of the era’s major composers, Beethoven included. It was an unusually congenial match, if not an affluent one. Aristide encouraged Louise to perform, partnered with her to organize salons and other events that showcased her writing in the context of their joint interests, and, crucially, published her works.Conforming to the composer-virtuoso model of the day, Farrenc’s early piano pieces were rondos or sets of variations on popular and operatic tunes, but they were far from the ostentatious, flimsy norm. Her “Air Russe Varié,” from 1835, caught the attention of Robert Schumann, who praised its “delightful canonic games” in the spirit of Bach, and declared that “one must fall under their charm.”Joanne Polk, a professor at the Manhattan School of Music, last year released an excellent recording of the “Air Russe” and half of Farrenc’s set of 30 Études, which — like Chopin’s from the same decade — escape their pedagogical constraints.“She really knew how to write well for the piano,” Polk said, “so that the music fits beautifully in the fingers and yet challenges you.”The cover of the autograph manuscript of Farrenc’s 30 Études (Op. 26), which, like Chopin’s, escape their pedagogical constraints.Bibliothèque nationale de FranceFarrenc laid the groundwork for a generation of female pianists to succeed as interpreters in Paris, a group that included her daughter Victorine. Victorine’s first prize at the Conservatory in 1844 — one of several pupils of Louise’s to achieve that distinction — foreshadowed what the journal Le Ménestrel declared in 1845 would be the “reign of the women.”Even so, as the musicologist Katharine Ellis has written, Farrenc was unique among such women for her large-scale compositions, finding a niche as audiences and critics at once enthroned Beethoven and sought a retreat from his late style.This was a difficult environment for anybody to write in, let alone a woman, but it was an unavoidable one. Every living composer who had a symphony performed from 1831 to 1849 by the Société des Concerts, Paris’s sole enduring outlet for orchestral music, found Beethoven closing the bill. Even at matinees chez Farrenc, Beethoven dominated programs, though she sometimes took the opportunity to promote his more radical works, playing his Op. 109 sonata at the premiere of her Second Piano Quintet in 1840.Like Mendelssohn, Farrenc drew praise for working within the confines of older traditions. When the prestigious Institute de France awarded her a chamber-music prize in 1869, it cited her for works that “glow with the purest classical style.”That is not to say that her works sound dutifully conservative now, though that reputation surely once hurt their prospects; they seem to glance back less in imitation, and more as if to teach listeners where they are coming from.Her two overtures from 1834 — Pablo Heras-Casado and the Pittsburgh Symphony perform the first on Oct. 22 and 24 — look back to Haydn and Mozart, just as some of her études trained players in Baroque styles. But they have a spirit, even in their darkness, that is wholly their own.The same is true of the symphonies. The First, from 1841, “is more in a Baroque style,” Equilbey said, “really the beginning of something.”The Second, from 1845, is somewhat more experimental. “The Scherzo reminds me of the first symphonies of Bruckner, with the same kind of covered angst; it’s fleeting, but it’s dark,” Nézet-Séguin said. “There is a connection with Mendelssohn in the last movement, in the counterpoint, but she takes it to another level. It’s used as a dramatic construction.”The Third, from 1847, is her masterpiece, with a brisk, light Scherzo and a slow movement that unfolds gloriously.“When I dug inside the score, I discovered an incredibly skillful hand,” said Gianandrea Noseda, who led a fiercely dramatic account of the Third with the National Symphony Orchestra in June and will reprise it in February. “She had a personal language, while reflecting the form. There are moments where she suspends the development section, for instance, inserting more ideas, going in the direction of a third melodic idea without getting to that point. It’s very creative.”But Farrenc’s development was, perhaps, cut short. After the death of her daughter in 1859, she retreated from composition, writing just a few miniatures.She turned instead to trying to start an early-music revival, arranging a series of lecture-recitals in the Salle Érard from 1862, at which her students paired her works with those of Byrd, Frescobaldi, Rameau and others. When Aristide died in 1865, he left only eight completed volumes of their carefully edited compendium of three centuries of piano music, “Le Trésor des Pianistes.” Louise added 15 more, while continuing to teach.Farrenc died on Sept. 15, 1875, with a notice reaching The New York Times later that month. By then, tastes had already started to turn. “It is sad to say,” wrote one witness at her memorial, “but at the funeral rites for this genuine artist, the Conservatory — where she was professor for 30 years — was conspicuous by its absence.”Happily, Farrenc is an absence no more. More

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      Review: Carnegie Hall Reopens With a Blaze From Philadelphia

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      After a 572-day closure, the hall was lit by a vibrant concert from the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin.After being closed for 572 days because of the pandemic, Carnegie Hall, the country’s pre-eminent concert space, opened its season on Wednesday. It took only a simple greeting from the stage — “welcome back,” spoken by Clive Gillinson, the hall’s executive and artistic director — for the audience to burst into sustained cheers.On paper, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s program — including favorites like Bernstein’s joyous overture to “Candide” and staples like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony — seemed tilted toward an opening night’s traditional purpose as a crowd-pleasing fund-raising gala. Yet both the choice of works and the vibrant music-making went deeper into questions of classical music’s relevance and renewal than I had expected.Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the orchestra’s music director, began by leading a performance of Valerie Coleman’s “Seven O’Clock Shout,” a work that the Philadelphians premiered online in May. This five-minute score has become the orchestra’s unofficial anthem for this difficult period. Inspired by Boccaccio and the 7 p.m. cheers for frontline workers during the pandemic, the piece offers a hard-won vision of a more beautiful place.Nézet-Séguin, also the music director of the Metropolitan Opera, led vibrant, impetuous performances of works both classic and new.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesIt opens with cautious trumpet fanfares that activate tremulous strings. The music goes through passages of jittery riffs, burnished string chords, elegiac quietude and eruptive restlessness — complete with actual shouts and claps from the players. The piece at times has a Copland-esque glow, but Coleman adds tart harmonic tweaks and assertive syncopations that continually surprise.The brilliant pianist Yuja Wang was the soloist for Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2, a work from 1957 considered one of this composer’s lighter, wittier scores. But from the start, this performance — especially Wang’s commanding, colorful playing — seemed determined to look below the bustling surface for hints of the bitterly satirical Shostakovich.As the orchestra played the chortling opening theme, alive with woodwinds, Wang almost sneaked into the fray with a subtly lyrical rendering of the piano’s quizzical lines. Then, taking charge, she dispatched bursts of brittle chords, tossed off creepy-crawly runs and kept bringing out both the sweetly melodic and industriously steely elements of the three-movement work.Yuja Wang joined for a commanding, colorful performance of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesThen Nézet-Séguin, who in his other role as music director of the Metropolitan Opera is currently leading performances of Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” turned to the “Candide” overture — and may have tried too hard to tease out jagged edges and multilayered complexities in Bernstein’s sparkling, impish music.He then spoke to the audience about how the disruptions of the pandemic shook our collective sense of “where we are, where we are going,” and explained the pairing of the final two works on the program: Iman Habibi’s short “Jeder Baum spricht” (“Every Tree Speaks”) and Beethoven’s Fifth. The Habibi score, written in dialogue with the Fifth and Sixth symphonies, was premiered in Philadelphia on March 12, 2020, to an empty hall, just after pandemic closures began.Habibi imagines how Beethoven, a nature lover, might respond to today’s climate crisis. On Wednesday, the compelling piece came across like a series of frustrated attempts at cohesion and peace, with fitful starts, hazy chords and driving yet irregular rhythmic figures. Finally, there is a sense, however uneasy, of affirmation and brassy richness.Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphians will play seven concerts in all at Carnegie this season, including a complete survey of Beethoven’s symphonies.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesWithout a pause, Nézet-Séguin dove into the Beethoven. And if you think this classic work has to sound heroic and monumental, this performance was not for you. Here was an impetuous, in-the-moment account. Tempos shifted constantly. Some passages raced forward breathlessly, only to segue to episodes in which Nézet-Séguin drew out lyrical inner voices you seldom hear so prominently. It was exciting and unpredictable. Beethoven felt like he was responding to Habibi, as much as vice versa.The Philadelphians had planned to present a complete survey of the symphonies at Carnegie last season, as part of the celebrations of Beethoven’s 250th birthday. That cycle will now take place in five programs over the coming months, with most of these totemic works preceded by shorter new pieces. (Coming to Carnegie no fewer than seven times in all, the orchestra also plays more Coleman in February, alongside Barber and Florence Price, and Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” in April.)If the opening-night pairing and performances were indicative, this series will be a stimulating conversation between classical music’s storied past and the tumultuous present.Philadelphia OrchestraOther Beethoven symphony programs on Oct. 20, Nov. 9, Dec. 7 and Jan. 11 at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan; carnegiehall.org. More

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      Sonia Sanchez Wins the Gish Prize

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      The poet, educator and activist will receive a cash award of about $250,000. The prize is for an artist who “has pushed the boundaries of an art form” and “contributed to social change.”The poet and activist Sonia Sanchez, 87, a leading figure of the Black Arts Movement, has been awarded the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, the prize trust said on Thursday.The honor, which carries a cash award of about $250,000, is awarded to an artist who “has pushed the boundaries of an art form, contributed to social change and paved the way for the next generation.”Sanchez, the author of more than 20 books, is known for melding musical formats like the blues with traditional poetic forms like the haiku and tanka, using American Black speech patterns and experimenting with punctuation and spelling.Her work champions Black culture, civil rights, feminism and peace.“When we come out of the pandemic, it’s so important that we don’t insist that we go back to the way things were,” Sanchez said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “We’ve got to strive for beauty, which is something I’ve tried to do in my work.”This year, the five-member selection committee, led by Zeyba Rahman, the senior program officer of the Building Bridges program of the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, chose Sanchez unanimously out of 50 finalists from various artistic disciplines.Rahman said in a statement that the award recognizes Sanchez’s “extraordinary literary gift and her lifelong commitment to speaking up for social justice.” On Nov. 11, Sanchez will reprise her role in Christian McBride’s “The Movement Revisited,” in which she will recite the words of Rosa Parks, at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. More

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      Morat, la banda colombiana que conquista el mundo al ritmo del banjo

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      Una de las bandas con mayor proyección de América Latina le habla a una generación con ansiedades y problemas que, a menudo, vive en un contexto de gran agitación social.El momento decisivo para una de las bandas de más rápido crecimiento en América Latina llegó gracias a un instrumento poco probable: un banjo robado.En 2014, la banda colombiana Morat tuvo una sesión de grabación en Bogotá. Sus cuatro miembros todavía estudiaban en la universidad, eran amigos de la infancia que tocaban en eventos informales y, algunas noches de la semana, se presentaban en bares. Mientras buscaba inspiración, el guitarrista Juan Pablo Villamil tomó un instrumento que no sabía exactamente cómo tocar.“En ese entonces todos sabíamos que queríamos sonar distinto, explorar cosas”, recordó Villamil en una reciente llamada de Zoom cuando sus compañeros de banda Juan Pablo Isaza, Simón Vargas y Martín Vargas se unieron para agregar sus propios aportes. Grabaron una guitarra de 12 cuerdas y una mandolina, luego alguien vio un banjo colgado en la pared. Lo tomaron prestado y nunca lo devolvieron.“En cuanto al proceso de aprendizaje, yo diría que fue principalmente en YouTube”, agregó Villamil. “Porque no hay muchos profesores de banjo en Colombia”.“Mi nuevo vicio”, la canción que estaban escribiendo en ese momento, terminó con un sencillo pero prominente riff de banjo y llamó la atención de Paulina Rubio, la estrella pop mexicana, quien rápidamente la grabó con la banda. El tema se convirtió en una sensación en España y llegó a las listas de éxitos en América Latina y Estados Unidos. Los músicos fueron invitados a Europa para que grabaran más música, y se llevaron el banjo.“No podíamos ser una banda de un solo hit, la canción con Paulina y eso es todo”, dijo Villamil. La canción que llevaban como su “as bajo la manga” era “Cómo te atreves”, que ahora tiene más de 200 millones de vistas en YouTube. Con su banjo acelerado, letras llenas de imágenes y un ambiente alegre de “road trip pop” que se ha convertido en el sonido de Morat, la canción marcó la llegada fulgurante del grupo a la escena de la música latina en 2015. Desde entonces, no han parado de crecer.En julio, el grupo lanzó su tercer álbum, ¿A dónde vamos?, y la semana pasada comenzó la etapa estadounidense de su gira que los llevará a teatros y estadios en California y Texas, con paradas en Chicago, Nueva York, Atlanta y Miami. Con canciones que abordan la angustia, la nostalgia y el enamoramiento, la banda ha forjado conexiones poderosas a través de fronteras y océanos al hablarle a una generación de jóvenes cuyas ansiedades y preocupaciones personales, grandes o pequeñas, a menudo se desarrollan en un contexto de agitación social.“Lo que intenta hacer Morat es usar palabras simples para explicar sentimientos complicados”, dijo Pedro Malaver, el manager de la banda. “No estamos tratando de ser Neruda. Solo tratamos de decirle a la gente: no estás solo”.Las características de lo que Villamil definió como la “firma sonora” de la banda incluyen letras dolidas y nostálgicas sobre el amor no correspondido que recuerdan a los boleros clásicos; coros cantados al unísono; y el uso de instrumentos (como el banjo, el piano eléctrico o la guitarra de acero) que rara vez se escuchan en el pop latino. Han lanzado poderosas baladas, melodías funky de R&B y canciones de rock que se inspiran en el country. “Podemos llegar hasta donde nos permitan los instrumentos”, dijo Martín Vargas, el baterista de la banda.Musicalmente, la banda es un poco atípica en un ambiente donde el reguetón recibe la mayor atención. Las influencias de Morat incluyen Coldplay, Bacilos, Mac Miller, el poeta y cantante español Joaquín Sabina, Dave Matthews Band, la banda de rock colombiana Ekhymosis y, por supuesto, los Beatles. Villamil e Isaza también son fanáticos del country (escriben y graban a menudo en Nashville), y los hermanos Vargas eran metaleros antes de incursionar en el folk-rock.“En 2021, no hay un sonido único que defina el pop en América Latina”, escribió Kevin Meenan, gerente de tendencias musicales de YouTube, en un correo electrónico. “En cierto modo, Morat es un microcosmos de esta tendencia que incorpora una amplia gama de sonidos y géneros en su música, y en su caso, suelen usar influencias distintas a la movida más popular del reguetón y el trap latino”.Leila Cobo, vicepresidenta y líder de la industria latina en Billboard, dijo: “Hay muchas suposiciones sobre lo que es la música latina en este momento, pero es un territorio muy amplio”.Y añadió: “Morat demuestra que la música latina no es necesariamente lo que ves en las listas de éxitos en un momento determinado. Escriben grandes canciones pop con buenas letras. Son fieles a sí mismos, y constantemente amplían su base de fans”.MORAT COMENZÓ cuando tocaban en la escuela primaria; sus miembros se conocen desde los cinco años. A medida que se acercaban al final de la escuela secundaria, Isaza, Villamil, Simón Vargas y Alejandro Posada, el baterista original del grupo, formaron una banda. Después del lanzamiento de su primer álbum en 2016, Posada se salió para concentrarse en sus estudios y el hermano menor de Vargas se incorporó.Al principio, los miembros de Morat (que en ese entonces se llamaba Malta) repartían sus discos en los bares de Bogotá hasta que lograron presentarse de manera regular en un local llamado La Tea, donde los fanáticos del grupo eran el personal de seguridad y los mismos músicos mezclaban y hacían los arreglos en las presentaciones en vivo. Pronto, comenzó a surgir su público. “Recuerdo que teníamos un juego: cada vez que tocábamos en La Tea tratábamos de adivinar cuánta gente iba a vernos”, dijo Simón Vargas. “Y, por lo general, llegaban más personas de las que esperábamos”.“Podemos llegar hasta donde nos permitan los instrumentos”, dijo Martín Vargas, el baterista de la banda.Gianfranco Tripodo para The New York TimesPero no todos veían el potencial del grupo. Villamil recuerda que en la primera reunión que tuvieron con Malaver, que en ese entonces empezaba su carrera como un joven representante artístico, los rechazó después de escuchar una de sus primeras canciones. “Nos dijo: ‘Creo que ustedes son talentosos, pero nunca tendrán una canción en la radio. Deberían haber nacido en Argentina a fines de los setenta, porque su música no es adecuada para lo que está sucediendo en este momento’”.Después de verlos actuar en vivo en La Tea unos días después, Malaver rápidamente cambió de opinión. “Fui con la peor actitud de la historia a ese concierto ¡Pero luego empezaron a tocar!”, recuerda. Esa misma noche decidió representar a la banda.Ya llevan casi una década trabajando juntos, y las colaboraciones de Morat se han extendido por todo el espectro de la música en español: han hecho canciones con la actriz mexicana Danna Paola, con el cantaor de flamenco Antonio Carmona, con el rockero Juanes y con estrellas del pop como Sebastián Yatra y Aitana, entre muchos otros.“El catálogo del grupo realmente habla del poder de la colaboración en la región”, dijo Meenan. “Este éxito no ha estado ligado a un solo país. En YouTube, hemos visto su música en más de 15 países, obteniendo lugares en el Top 40 en lugares como España, México, Bolivia, Argentina, Italia y Ecuador, además de su Colombia natal”. Dijo que Morat ha logrado tener más de 950 millones de visitas en YouTube, solo en los últimos 12 meses.MORAT ESTABA de gira por España cuando hablamos por Zoom, y el grupo se juntó en un sofá frente a la cámara como cuatro hermanos. Se movían cómodamente entre el inglés y el español cuando querían expresar más claramente un punto, hacían bromas y, a menudo, uno terminaba las oraciones del otro. Tampoco dudaron en debatir en voz alta algunas de las preguntas más complejas.Dos temas surgen a menudo en las letras de Morat: el amor y la guerra, que es un tema delicado en un país que ha soportado décadas de conflicto armado.“El contexto en el que hemos crecido y en el que vivimos, tiene esa imagen todos los días, todo el tiempo”, dijo Simón Vargas. “Y creo que, aunque no quieras, se nota y te influye”.Aunque la imagen global de Colombia se ha visto afectada por descripciones generales que la ubican como un lugar violento, la realidad, por supuesto, es mucho más compleja. “Bogotá tiene estas montañas enormes y el sol sale detrás de las montañas. Entonces durante gran parte de la mañana el sol no ha salido de las montañas, pero el cielo está azul”, agrega Simón Vargas. “Eso es muy colombiano, en cierto modo es como si estuvieras viviendo al límite. Puedes ver la oscuridad, pero también sabes que hay algo más allí. Y, al mismo tiempo, estás al lado de la luz y justo al lado de una cultura muy hermosa y de gente muy hermosa”.En 2020, Simón Vargas, quien también es escritor y actualmente está terminando su licenciatura en historia en la Universidad de Los Andes, publicó un libro de cuentos sobre Bogotá inspirado en el realismo mágico. “Tal vez fue una forma de tocar temas más intensos y oscuros que los que hablamos en nuestra música”. Lo tituló, apropiadamente, A la orilla de la luz.El último álbum de Morat se compuso casi en su totalidad durante la pandemia de COVID-19 en una de las regiones más afectadas del mundo. “No hay un solo ser humano en este planeta que no haya pensado, ¿a dónde vamos después de esto?”, dijo Simón Vargas. “Decidimos que se llamaría ¿A dónde vamos? literalmente porque pensamos que era una excelente manera de hablar sobre lo que está sucediendo en todos los aspectos. No sabíamos cuándo volveríamos a tener conciertos. No sabíamos cómo es que la pandemia iba a cambiar el panorama social”.Martín Vargas dijo que el título también se refiere al proceso creativo de la banda. “Con la exploración musical que tratamos de hacer, ¿a dónde vamos con nuestros instrumentos?”, añadió. “Es muy evidente durante el álbum: las canciones son diferentes. Hay mucho rock. Y también hay claras referencias a países. Baladas, boleros”.Ninguna de sus letras habla explícitamente sobre la pandemia, pero casi todas las canciones están marcadas por temas de angustia personal, incertidumbre e inquietud que contrastan con melodías optimistas y, a menudo, muy bailables. Juntas, las composiciones muestran la versatilidad de Morat: la eléctrica “En coma” trata sobre una relación atrapada en el limbo; la balada “Mi pesadilla”, con el cantante colombiano Andrés Cepeda, trata sobre la ansiosa espera por la llegada de la persona adecuada; la acústica “Date la vuelta” es una sentida carta a un amigo que vive una relación tóxica.Aunque las canciones representan una variedad de estados de ánimo, todas tienen la estética de la banda que continúa sumando nuevos oyentes. “Siento que lo que hemos hecho hasta ahora ha sido un milagro”, dijo Isaza. “No sé por qué a la gente le gusta un banjo con letra en español. Lo considero un milagro, y el hecho de que todavía lo estemos haciendo, es asombroso para mí”..Aunque el disco comienza con la pregunta “¿A dónde vamos?”, termina con el mensaje esperanzador de “Simplemente pasan”: “Ya quiero decirle que bailemos / Que lo peor que puede pasar es que nos gustemos”, dice la banda. Y remata: “Porque cuando las cosas buenas tienen que pasar / Simplemente pasan”. More

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      Joy Crookes’s Introspective Soul Digs Deep Beneath Her ‘Skin’

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      The 22-year-old British-Irish-Bangladeshi musician is releasing a debut album that makes a strong statement about her identity.LONDON — Joy Crookes knew she was making a statement by naming her debut album “Skin.”“It’s one of the strongest parts of our bodies,” the 22-year-old singer-songwriter said. But “in every other sense, socially and externally, it is used against us,” she added in a recent interview at her London apartment, nestled on the sofa with the Kama Sutra and a novel by Jhumpa Lahiri visible on a sparsely filled nearby shelf.“Skin,” due Oct. 15, makes an impassioned statement about her British-Irish-Bangladeshi heritage. “The thing about being mixed race is there’s so much projection,” she said. “My identity is solely my responsibility, and my choice, and I don’t need anyone’s permission.”In her music, Crookes offers listeners a nuanced and candid exploration of her multiracial identity. At a time when many conversations about race in the arts and calls for change have only recently begun, Crookes’s commitment to vulnerability in her storytelling has helped her connect with a growing — and loyal — fan base.Listening to Crookes’s soulful, intimate music can feel like intruding on a private conversation or cracking open a diary, placing her alongside introspective British artists like Arlo Parks and Cleo Sol. “Don’t you know the skin that you’re given is made to be lived in?” she sings, with a plea in her voice on the album’s bare-bones title track, quoting words she spoke to a suicidal friend over simple piano and strings. Other songs explore her experiences with sexual assault, and speak directly to Britain’s Conservative government: “No such thing as a kingdom when tomorrow’s done for the children,” she sings on the sharp-tongued, retro-tinged “Kingdom.”Crookes said she uses her music to learn about herself, as well as for catharsis.  “I think it’s a building block into me as a human being, and learning about myself.”Charlotte Hadden for The New York TimesGrowing up, Crookes — who turns 23 on Oct. 9 — bought CDs by Marvin Gaye and Kate Nash, and taught herself to play the guitar and piano, and later, to produce. She was first contacted at 15 by a music manager who saw a YouTube video of her and a friend covering “Hit The Road Jack.” At 19 she signed with an imprint of Sony Music.In the last four years, she has released three EPs and several singles, featured in a Beats campaign and landed on the 2020 shortlist for the BRIT Rising Star Award, which is given to the British act tipped to make it big in the coming year.“Every now and then you get someone who’s phenomenally talented, incredibly grounded in their emotions and how they process the world around them,” said Blue May, a producer who worked on “Skin” and believes Crookes has the potential to be “a voice for her generation.”The process of writing “Skin” excavated powerful feelings about her family’s history. Crookes’s Irish father and Bangladeshi mother split, turbulently, when she was two. Navigating their different cultures, she felt she couldn’t “be a byproduct of one or the other” given “how much war that would have caused,” she said.Some traumas left even deeper generational wounds. “All the men in my family were killed in front of my great-grandmother,” Crookes said, referring to Bangladesh’s bloody fight for independence from what was then West Pakistan. “The ramifications of that war live on today.”On the album, Crookes leans into her Bangladeshi roots, singing the colloquial Bangla phrase “Theek Ache” — translated as “it’s OK” — to brush off nightly escapades of drinking and hookups. She also carefully probes her family’s experiences as immigrants living in London. “I’ve seen the things you’ve seen/you don’t speak, you leave the traces,” she sings to her Bangladeshi relatives on the dramatic, soulful “19th floor,” named for her grandmother’s apartment in public housing building in south London, where Crookes spent much of her childhood.The process of writing “Skin” excavated powerful feelings about Crookes’s family’s history. Charlotte Hadden for The New York TimesIn her music videos, Crookes also immortalizes her family’s history. The clip for “Since I Left You” is based on a photograph taken in her family’s village in Bangladesh, and features the musician singing tearfully in front of a corrugated metal shelter with clotheslines blowing in the breeze.For the cinematographer Deepa Keshvala, working with Crookes on the video was the first time in her then seven years in the music industry she had seen someone proudly putting their South Asian heritage on display.“She was 19 when we did that,” she said in a phone interview. At that age, “to have a strong sense of who you are is pretty amazing.”Crookes said her music is therapy that keeps paying dividends. “It’s the way that I let things out, and it just so happens to be my job,” she said. “I think it’s a building block into me as a human being, and learning about myself.” More

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      Aneesa Folds, Back on Broadway, Is Still Getting Used to This

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      There has been an am-I-dreaming quality to Aneesa Folds’s life lately. That much she wanted to make clear.Yes, that was her in the glittering gold jumpsuit at the Tony Awards, performing in knockout voice with the troupe Freestyle Love Supreme. But a few mornings later, sitting in a booth at a hotel restaurant in Manhattan’s theater district, she was still doing a mental double take at the memory of Broadway stars saying hello to her backstage “as if I wasn’t a pedestrian.” And meeting a reporter for a profile interview? That wasn’t normal either.“I love that you’re talking to me as if this is regular for me,” she said, and laughed.On the other hand, she is on her way back to Broadway with Freestyle Love Supreme. Founded by Thomas Kail, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Anthony Veneziale, the longstanding hip-hop improv comedy troupe got fresh attention with the rise of “Hamilton,” which led to a Broadway run two years ago. Now, it’s back for a limited encore engagement that starts previews on Thursday and opens Oct. 19.Folds, who even offstage has an easy charisma, is a relative newcomer to the group. When she and Kaila Mullady joined in 2019, they were entering what had been all-male territory. Then, as now, they had only a week’s worth of rehearsals to acclimate before stepping in front of the first audience.At the Tony Awards, from left: James Monroe Iglehart, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr., Wayne Brady and Folds.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“You’re going into this space with all of these people that have been doing a show for 18, 19 years,” said Folds, 28. “They know each other like the back of their hands, and they’re like, ‘OK, we’re just going to improvise.’ And then you go to Broadway the next week and they put you onstage.”In 2019, she spent rehearsals in survival mode, trying to soak up as much knowledge as she could about the mechanics of the show. This time feels different — more like “playing with your friends,” she said.But to Kail, the show’s director, it was obvious even in the jam-session audition ahead of the original Broadway run that Folds, with her boldness and talent, belonged.“I was in the session with Chris Jackson and James Iglehart, who have both been in the group for a long time and have both been on Broadway for a long time,” he said in a phone interview. “She was doing her thing, like full Aneesa, and they looked at me and they were like: ‘Bro. Bro.’ I was like: ‘I know! Like, try to be cool. She’s still in the room.’”If Folds could turn back time — the way Freestyle Love Supreme does in one of its signature bits — and tell her child self what she is up to now, it might come as something of a shock. Growing up in Jamaica, Queens, she loved singing and felt safe blending in with a choir, but she was mortified whenever her talent was singled out for praise.“I was afraid of my voice,” she said. “I just was very insecure.”She had teachers who pushed and prodded her, though, and a mother who agreed when they encouraged her to do things like perform in the school musical. Her mother also found programs that helped her daughter blossom, like the Wingspan Arts theater conservatory in Manhattan and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City.From left, Chris Sullivan, Christopher Jackson, Andrew Bancroft, Folds and Iglehart during Freestyle Love Supreme’s Broadway run in 2019.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesStill, musical theater — which, when you get right down to it, is what Freestyle Love Supreme does — was a tough sell for Folds as a child, partly because, she said, “it felt very white to me.”“I didn’t really see myself,” she added. “I just didn’t know if I could be in that world, if I was allowed to be in that world, to take up space in that world. And I was a very, very shy kid. I didn’t really speak much.”At Repertory Company High School for Theater Arts, in the Town Hall building on West 43rd Street, Folds emerged from her shell, making jokes and rapping in the cafeteria. (That’s also when she came up with the rapper name Young Nees, which she uses in Freestyle Love Supreme.) And thanks to Miranda’s “In the Heights,” a show she first listened to on a Young People’s Chorus trip to Austria, then saw repeatedly on Broadway, she thought there might be a place for her after all.“That was the show that made me feel like, OK, they’re changing musical theater,” she said.But not nearly fast enough. This spring, Folds told Playbill that most of the racist encounters she has had in her life have been in theater.“When I wasn’t doing Broadway,” she said, “I was doing a lot of regional shows. I’ve been in a lot of spaces where I was the only person of color, so as you can imagine, I’ve heard all sorts of things.”Like comments from wig designers who didn’t know how to work with Black hair — remarks so painful and common that Folds pulled in her shoulders to make herself smaller as she spoke of them.“When I get into a wig chair, I start apologizing,” she said. “Like: ‘I have a lot of hair, this is all mine, I have locs. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’”Once, she said, she was assigned to actor housing in a home whose white owner had a collection of mammy dolls, and took them out to show her.This season, productions by Black artists are abundant on Broadway, but Folds said she feared those higher numbers will be a mere blip before the industry reverts to its old ways.“I really pray and hope that it doesn’t,” she said. “So that the little girl that’s sitting in Queens, New York, who maybe wants to do musical theater, does see herself.”It was during a visit home, when Folds was a college student at the Hartt School at the University of Hartford, that she first saw Freestyle Love Supreme. An instant fan, she wanted to do what they did. “It felt like everything I was good at,” she said.Freestyle Love Supreme, Folds said, “felt like everything I was good at.”Lia Clay Miller for The New York TimesSo in 2019, the year after the troupe started an academy, she applied. And while Kail said the program is not meant to be a training ground for new members, people there quickly told him they had found someone.With the addition of women, Folds said, suddenly the group had a wider pool of topics to talk about onstage. She particularly relishes the memory of a woman shouting “period cramps” when Veneziale was collecting audience pet peeves for the cast to rap about.“He didn’t hear her,” Folds said. “Which men often don’t. And I was like, ‘I’ll take period cramps.’”She did her rap, the crowd screamed with delight, and women came to the stage door and raved about it.“It’s awesome to be one of the women in the group,” Folds said. “We’re here and we’re switching it up.”Freestyle Love Supreme has led to work for her on other projects, including Miranda’s recent animated musical for children, “Vivo,” and his film adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s “Tick, Tick … Boom!,” out next month in theaters and on Netflix. In that movie’s recently released trailer, she is in the opening shot.All this contributes to Folds’s pinch-me feeling. A small, doubting part of her wonders if she is where she is because her higher-profile colleagues are also her friends. A more brisk and confident part knows that she didn’t fall into any of her success — though if she’s a pleasure to be around, that doesn’t hurt.“My name does mean friendly and well-liked,” she said. “I try to live up to it. Be nice: That’s the first rule of theater.” More

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      Cimafunk’s Quest to Create One Nación Under a Groove

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      The Cuban musician’s new album, “El Alimento,” is a fresh take on funk that blends Afro-Cuban and African American rhythms using a cast of international collaborators.A few months ago in a Tallahassee, Fla., recording studio, the Cuban vocalist and composer Cimafunk was engaged in a climactic meeting of the minds with the Parliament-Funkadelic leader George Clinton when they stumbled on a fascinating connection between African American and Afro-Cuban music.Cimafunk, born Erik Iglesias Rodríguez, was scatting out the 1950s smash “Los Marcianos,” which instantly delighted Clinton, who had loved the melody of the song so much that he recorded an anthemic cover of it called “Groovealliegiance” for Funkadelic’s 1978 classic “One Nation Under a Groove.” But Clinton, who had created an Afrofuturist cottage industry with his band’s elaborate costuming and stage props, had no idea that the song was about Martians landing in Havana to dance cha cha cha.“I was saying, brother, you wrote that song talking about the Mothership and that whole connection and you didn’t know that?” Cimafunk, 32, recalled in a video interview last week, standing in front of a South Florida building surrounded by palm trees and lush grass. “All those people like Pérez Prado, Chano Pozo, all that craziness made a mark,” he added, referring to the Cuban musical innovators. “It not only penetrated the instruments, but also the vocal rhythms.”Afro-Cuban rhythms have mingled with African American ones going all the way back to late-19th-century New Orleans — distant siblings that intersected at key moments, like the gestation of jazz, the Charlie Parker-Dizzy Gillespie era of Birdland bebop, and the stunning performance of Ray Barretto’s band in Questlove’s recent documentary “Summer of Soul.” But for Cimafunk, whose new album “El Alimento,” out Friday, is filled with star-studded collaborations with Clinton, Lupe Fiasco, CeeLo Green and the pianist Chucho Valdés, the time for fresh Cuban funk is now.“What Erik has done is unite the two tendencies — Afro-Cuban and African American,” Valdés, the founder of the influential 1970s jazz/funk group Irakere, said in an interview. “He has converted this into a new school that until now I haven’t heard done.”“El Alimento” is a frenetic joy ride of freewheeling blasts of percussive funk intercut with pumped-up versions of classic Cuban riffs called tumbaos, and even a nod to Michael Jackson’s famous quoting of Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa.” Yet Cimafunk also explores his compositional abilities and impressive vocal range on the blues ballad “Salvaje” and the Spanish-guitar-tinged “No Me Alcanzas,” featuring the classic Cuban percussionists Los Papines. While he wants to his voice to carry the entire lineage of Cuban music, he reminds me most of Benny Moré, who was also a self-taught vocalist that highly trained musicians pushed themselves to keep up with.“What Cima is doing is like a brand-new funk,” Clinton said in a phone interview. “Tito Puente and that kind of stuff, Tito Rodríguez, all of that was my favorite music back in New York. The mambo and the cha-cha was the same as disco in the ’70s.”Dressed in an African-inspired print shirt, and peering through a pair of oversize sunglasses, Cimafunk showed flashes of amused wonderment, as if he was both surprised by and belonging to the moment. When explaining details about writing and composing, he broke into song, and the birds in the surrounding trees joined him, seemingly inspired.The title “El Alimento” means “The Nourishment.” Cimafunk said he chose it “because making the album was what nourished me spiritually during the whole process of the pandemic.”Akilah Townsend for The New York TimesBorn and raised in Pinar del Río, a town west of Havana, Cimafunk grew up listening to giants like Moré, Bola de Nieve, and Los Van Van and its charismatic singer Mayito Rivera. But he also encountered music from beyond the island, especially on TV programs like “De La Gran Escena,” where he saw Tom Jones, Phil Collins and Sting. On one of the new album’s signature tracks, “Esto Es Cuba,” he describes grooving residents of Guantánamo who were able to see live broadcasts of “Soul Train” because of the U.S. naval base’s antenna nearby.Cimafunk’s conservative family pushed him to study medicine but supported him when he decided to move to Havana and pursue his musical ambitions. “At first I got into reggaeton because of the girls, and the fact that anybody with a sound card and microphone can do it,” he said. “Then I discovered the trova,” referring to an older genre centered on the ballad. “That where I started to write my songs with more structure — very odd songs that no one understood — the stranger songs you wrote, the more exotic you were.”Cimafunk’s first album, “Terapia,” arrived in 2017 stocked with neo-trova exoticism like “Parar El Tiempo” and “Me Voy,” a danceable live favorite inspired by Nigerian Afropop and pilón, an Afro-Cuban carnaval rhythm. “Terapia” contained the seeds of the new album, and a mellower, ’70s soul groove. “El Alimento” (“The Nourishment”) has thoroughly transformed him into an international funk champion.“I called it ‘El Alimento’ because making the album was what nourished me spiritually during the whole process of the pandemic,” Cimafunk said. He said he intends the album as a kind of descarga, a word that in Cuba means both a musical jam and a release of accumulated emotional baggage.“It’s about the connection between the spirit and the body and the importance of release, and loving yourself,” he explained.The album’s producer, Jack Splash (Alicia Keys, Kendrick Lamar, Solange), has fronted his own indie funk band Plant Life, and moved back and forth between Los Angeles and Miami, giving him a unique perspective on the Afro-Cuban/African American overlap.“It’s two different sensibilities — even if you’re listening to the same funk, your swing might be a little different,” he said in a video interview. He said Shakira once asked him to add more syncopation to his standard beatbox rhythm track; on the new song “Estoy pa’ eso,” Splash and Cimafunk retool the “Shakira beatbox” to put a new spin on a sample from the American funk band Zapp, with mind-bending results.While some of Cimafunk’s strongest supporters, like Splash, believe his sense of style — tightfitting clothing, Bootsy Collins-esque sunglasses — evokes Fela Kuti, comparisons to the Nigerian Afrobeat king go beyond appearance: Rodríguez is an Africanist who often begins concerts with an a cappella rendition of a poem called “Faustino Congo,” which Cimafunk said is inspired by Miguel Barnet’s “Biography of a Runaway Slave.” The “cima” part of Cimafunk is a reference to cimarrones, runaway slaves whose defiance paralleled that of Jamaican Maroons, an inspiration for Bob Marley’s Rastafarian beliefs.“At first I got into reggaeton because of the girls, and the fact that anybody with a sound card and microphone can do it,” Cimafunk said. He soon moved on to other genres.Akilah Townsend for The New York Times“At first I grew up unaware — my family was Black and educated and felt they had to work twice as hard,” Cimafunk said. “African culture arrived in Cuba and changed everything! It’s the flow, the visuality, the concept, everything, and when I started to connect with that identity it was a relief because I arrived at a place of truth.”Splash noted that funk was more than a sonic touchstone. “People were scared when James Brown said ‘I’m Black and I’m proud,’” he said. “They thought, ‘Does that mean James Brown does not like white people?’ No, that’s not what he means. ‘Let’s lift my people up.’” They found a similar moment in the party anthem “La Noche” from the new album, which features the dancehall rapper Stylo G and the Colombian Afro-funk band ChocQuibTown, whose lead singer Goyo shouts at song’s end, “Afro-Latin power!”While he showcases the power of blending African American and Afro-Cuban music, Cimafunk is also engaging in a cultural mixing that celebrates a kind of Latin American hybridity, on his terms. He sees himself as part of a new generation that is destined to bring change.“Now that we have the internet, you can know what’s happening in the world, and have a million different opinions, and choose the one you want,” Cimafunk said. “We started analog,” he added, “now we’re in a pot that’s boiling.” More